By 762, expansion under the Abbasid dynasty (ca. 750-1258) had slowed, and the rulers in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and
Cordoba could survey their empire's peaceful boundaries, stretching from Asia to the Atlantic. Their attention turned to domestic matters rather
than expansion. Baghdad, under the Caliph al-Ma'mun (770-813), was made home to the empires first formal academy and library. Modeled to
some degree after the Alexandrine model, it was devoted to the transcription and translation of poetry, science, philosophy and theology. In
788, the construction of the colossal Royal Mosque of Cordoba, with its attached school and library, was underway.34
By 794, paper mills were being constructed along the rivers around Baghdad, with that precious material
being shipped to all the capitals of Islam. Book production in the east blossomed into a vital industry as
textual materials, translators, scholars and tradesman all spread throughout the Near East and
Mediterranean. A new sector of the economy was born, specializing in acquiring, duplicating or locating rare
books. The new libraries and colleges of Spain were no exception. 35 The prestige of
one's city or royal library led to a spirit of noble competition between the caliphs, viziers and deputies of
various provinces, each wishing to attract the brightest scholars and rarest literary talents. As one history
surmises,

Andalusia was, above all, famous as a land of scholars, libraries, books lovers and collectors…when Gerbert studied at Vich (ca. 995-999), the
libraries of Moorish Spain contained close to a million manuscripts…in Cordoba books were more eagerly sought than beautiful concubines or
jewels…the city's glory was the Great Library established by Al-Hakam II…ultimately it contained 400, 000 volumes…on the opening page of
each book was written the name, date, place of birth and ancestry of the author, together with the titles of his other works. Forty-eight volumes
of catalogues, incessantly amended, listed and described all titles and contained instructions on where a particular work could be found.
36

The libraries, in turn affiliated with a sprawling network of copyists, booksellers, papermakers and colleges, churned out as many
as 60, 000 treatises, poems, polemics and compilations a year. 37 The head librarian at Cordoba, Talid,
personally appointed to the mosque collection by al-Hakam, employed a female Fatimad deputy named
Labna, who acted as the Library's specialized acquisition expert in the bookstalls and merchants of Cairo,
Damascus and Baghdad. 38 This level of industry was in sharp contrast to the knowledge
production underway throughout much of Christendom, where during the same period the two largest
libraries (Avignon and Sorbonne) contained at most 2,000 volumes as late as 1150.39
To return, as discussed at the beginning of this essay, to the motif of requisite social conditions for the development of libraries and
historical record, we can see the Europeans were at a vast disadvantage when compared with the Moors of Spain. Natural disaster, political
violence, disease, theft, neglect and poverty all took a heavy toll upon monastic book production throughout Europe during the 7th and 8th
centuries. The manpower and resources required to train a scribe, supply him with bed, ink, parchment 40and food
were (on a page-per-page basis) incredibly high until well into the 12th century when some level of peace,
literacy and prosperity began to revive Europe. 41 Andalusia escaped these many of these
hardships for almost five continuous centuries, providing its literary industry with almost uninterrupted
economic stability from the early 8th to mid 13th century:

…literature acquired a new seat at the library of the Umajjades sic? in the Spanish town of Cordoba…Al-Hakam II in the tenth century had
books brought in large numbers from all parts of the Islamic empire, and in his palace kept numerous scribes, editors and bookbinders…later the
Arabic translations where again translated into Latin, and several famous classical authors, including Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen were, in
part at least, made known to European scholars of the Middle Ages in this round-about way. 42

It was only with the Reconquest of Spain and Sicily by the Normans in the 13th century that much of this material was closely
scrutinized by the Church, or physically removed for 'safekeeping' in the new universities or palaces of Europe. 43
The scribes of Christendom had never seen anything like the wealth of knowledge produced under the reign
of the Spanish Arabs. The introduction of the more economical paper medium was also, as noted, a crucial
boost to European literacy. 44 Compared to their monastic brothers in the north, the
secular Arab scribes also had the benefit of much wider literacy, as well as unhindered trade access to all
manner of bibliographic materials (ink, paper, etc.) from the East. 45 One aspect of
manuscript production by Arab calligraphers and scholars we have not yet mentioned, however is
quality46 , more specifically 'quality control', what medieval Europeans would later utilize in
their legal concept of the authentica habita, or specifying an original document of privilege.47
Early European medieval readers equated a book's writer with a sort of human 'transmitter, much in
contrast with the modern sense of author as authority.' 48 The Arabs, on the other hand,
developed an entirely different scheme.

As outlined, by 794 paper mills in Baghdad had dramatically decreased the cost of textual material throughout the Empire. Even
'popular' literature, as a credible genre, was fostered by a rising level of literacy (the first versions of al-Rashid's Arabian Nights are dated from this era). In 813, the Bait al-Hikmah ('House of Wisdom') was established in Baghdad (with its own libraries, laboratories, transcription service and observatories), an institution the likes of which Europe would not develop for another three hundred years.49
Reportedly, by the late ninth century, there were a hundred book and paper shops in the Waddah suburb of
Baghdad alone. 50 By 976, the library of Cordoba was said to have employed 500
librarians, scribes, physicians, historians, geographers and copyists; the catalogue had swollen to 44
volumes, arranged by subject, then order of acquisition.51 There was no difficulty in
acquiring new materials as titles moved freely from Byzantium to Baghdad, Cairo to Cordoba, by way of
Venetian and Arab shipping routes. 52 Maintaining the quality of the copy was another
matter.
To address this issue, Arab scribes developed numerous strategies to deal with the imperfections of bibliographictransmission,
much to the benefit of their libraries. First, specialized glossaries, vocabularies and dictionaries for each area of knowledge, be it history,
poetry, literature or medicine, were carefully researched to better the standards of spelling, grammar and usage.
53The compilation of textual material, often gathered in the lecture or reading rooms of the libraries
built throughout the empire, frequently led to transcriptions of scholarly discussions, intermingled with other
research, and given a final gloss by the scribe himself. These compilations often became books. The
authority to write these books came by way of a 'certificate of audition', an actual notarized document, which
asserted the writer to have schooled successfully upon the subject. This credential, called Arabic samã',
served to authenticate the 'authoritativetransmission, or isnad of a book, giving evidence that the person or persons
named…had studied the work under the direction of the author…belonging to a chain of transmitters going
back to the author.' A copy of the notice was placed inside each manuscript to attest to its value and
precision as a information source. 54
This system of certification and accreditation was necessary given the mass of literature being produced, and increasing level of scribal
apprenticeship evident throughout the Eastern and Western Arab world. According to some chroniclers of Andalusia, Hakam II (966) founded
three schools attached to the Great Mosque and another 24 in the city's suburbs before the end of his reign. 55 Pupils
would, after the allotted time and success, be issued ijãzahdiplomas which attested to their standards of
tutelage and qualifications for administrative, diplomatic or scribal postings (usually in the government).
56The postings offered were by no means exclusive to male students. Ibn al-Fayyãd, one
historian of the time, notes that in one eastern suburb of Cordoba, the Mosque authorities employed 170
women solely to make Kufic copies of the Qu'ran. By that time, textual knowledge had attained a special
position in Moorish culture, reflected in the importance given to book scholars. Librarians had risen to such
administrative and cultural power (as they were frequently authors and scientists as well), that such posts
were exclusive to the most wealthy and powerful families. One 10th century account of an Arabic 'house of
books' runs thus,

…the library constituted a library by itself; there was a superintendent, a librarian and an inspector chosen from the most trustworthy people in
the country. There is no book written up to this time in whatever branch of science but the prince has acquired a copy of it. The library
consists of one long vaulted room, annexed to which there are store rooms. The prince had made along the large room and the store
chambers, scaffoldings about the height of a man, three yards wide, of decorated wood, which have shelves from top to bottom; the books are
arranged on the shelves and for every branch of learning there are separate scaffolds. There are also catalogues in which all the titles of the
books are entered.57

§4. The Eventual Fate of the Cordovan Library of Caliph Hakam II

Just as historical circumstances conspired against the imperial sense of permanency which
afflicted many Roman administrators, eventually disintegrating their hold on the provinces of the
Mediterranean, so too did Arab rule of the Iberian province begin to falter in the first decades of second
millennium. Internal political divisions between factions in Cordoba, Seville, Fez and Baghdad spread from
palace courts into mosques and then finally onto the streets. As early as 909, Fatimad supporters in Egypt
banded together to seize power from the imperial rule (centered in Baghdad) by wresting control of the
mosques and schools. In effect a political struggle, its rhetoric took on highly religious overtones. The North
African movement (which soon spread from Egypt to Morocco and Spain) used religious orthodoxy and
charges of moral laxity to attack their Arab rulers. In many cities, the strategy worked. An increasingly
doctrinaire spirit spread throughout the empire (leading to several book burnings and sectarian inquisitions in
Baghdad ca. 923) and by 969 the Fatimad Berbers, ascribing to Ismaili doctrine, took command of Egypt.
Meanwhile, by 966, Norman raids had begun from the North on Western Spain, hostilities had broken out
between Sicilian and Andalusian navies, and by 1016 Pisan and Genoan fleets had launched an effort to
retake Sardinia.
With these drastic changes, the unchallenged cultural peace of Moorish Spain vanished. Internal power struggles and external naval
competition accelerated throughout the Mediterranean as the communes of northern Italy established merchant fleets of their own. This
heightened sense of competition finally allowed the Berber population (ruled Arab Spaniards but actually indigenous to North Africa) to openly
revolt. In 1031, the conservative backlash which had begun in Egypt over a century beforehand swept the Umayyad dynasty from power in
Spain. 58 With the removal of the long-standing al-Hakam family, effective cultural leadership over the region receded to individual cities, such
as Toledo and Seville. Some reports state the great Library of Cordoba was broken up, or even burned, by the Berber insurgency after the
expulsion of the Arabs from that city. 59 As chaos spread, the defensive line which insulated
Andalusia from Europe faltered, and between 1085-91, Toledo, Sicily and Sargasso were all occupied by
Christian armies. In 1095, seeing the successful mobilization of European forces in Spain, and hoping to
revive Christendom, Pope Urban II declared the Crusades. Cordova itself would not fall to Christian siege
until 1236 however, and it was actually during this period of political and religious conflict that much of the
cultural exchange took place through the scholarly pilgrimages Averroës and Michael the Scot. Yet by 1248
all of Eastern Spain had fallen to the Crusaders. This new regime enable a wave of Jewish and Christian
translation, particularly of the 'lost' Greek sciences, in what one scholar terms 'the invasion of Aristotle.' So
began the great resurgence of European thought and science:

Over a period of roughly a hundred years (1150-1250) all of Aristotle's writings were translated and introduced to the West, accompanied by a
formidable number of Arabic commentaries…this amounted to a vast new library. The work of assimilating and mastering it occupied the best
minds of Christendom and profoundly altered the spiritual and intellectual life of the West…such masterful Arabic commentators as Avicenna and
Averroës - who emphasized the unreligious and unspiritual character of the philosopher's thought - precipitated a grave crisis for the intellectual
leaders of the West…harmonizing all of it with the Christian faith constituted a tremendous task…it inaugurated a period of unparalleled intellectual
activity that reached its climax in the 13th century, especially in Paris and Oxford.60

Despite the turmoil caused by both the Crusades and Reconquest in Spain, the scholarly interchange between the cultural centers of
Andalusia and Europe actually intensified during this period. Two vastly divergent cultures were thrust together by conflict and commerce.
Individuals involved in planning, negotiation and trading desperately needed insight into the mind of the Other; 'thus in the midst of negative
attitudes and divisiveness, resulting from long-standing confrontation, a great deal of cultural interaction and borrowing took place.'
61 By 1275, Christianized Arab merchants had established the first paper-mills in Christian Spain and Italy; fifty years later, the
University of Paris alone employed 10,000 copyists. This exchange continued largely unhindered, until the dark days of the Inquisition; by then
however, the spirit of inquiry and reason had blossomed throughout Europe, and humanistic spirit rescued from the myriad threats presented to
the ideas found in the books of Iberia.

33Claude Cahen, L'Islam des origins au debut de l'empire ottoman (Paris: University of Paris, 1970), 119-120. 34 This political intervention in the fostering of learning was not unique to the East, as these efforts roughly
coincide with Alcuin of York being enlisted by Charlemagne to bolster the standards of his schools in France. He even went so
far as to allocate hunting lands to specific monasteries so they might have the leather required to bind their books. See Tierney
and Painter, Western Europe in the Middle Ages (NY: Knopf, 1983), 143; Christ,123-127.35 Imamuddin, 141. 36Richard Erdoes, 1000 AD (Berkley: Seastone, 1998), 60-61. al-Hakam, it should be noted, was somewhat
frowned upon in the more religiously orthodox Eastern empire for being rather blasé on the tenets of the Prophet. When he
was pressured by local clergy to forbid wine drinking, however, he was reminded by his chief treasurer that it was largely the sin
tax on wine which was paying for a new wing of the Cordoba library. All discussion of the pious policy was immediately
abandoned. 37Ibid.; Harris, 79-82; Sordo, 55. 38Women who had forsaken marriage, and dedicated their lives to book-hunting, were employed by many of the
Caliphates' royal libraries in this age. See Fred Leemhuis, "The Koran and its exegesis: from memorizing to learning," in
Centers of learning: learning and location in pre-modern Europe and the Near East (NY: Brill, 1995), 91-92; Imamuddin, 140. 39Christ, 14-15; see also Leila Avrin, Scribes, scripts and books (Chicago: ALA, 1991), 208-210, and Banks,
Medieval Manuscript Bookmaking (Meutchen: Scarecrow, 1989), 45. 40By one approximation, 179 sheep skins would be required to produce one full copy of the Bible. The care and
raising of these animals, the preparation of the skins, was all heavily labour intensive, especially for small monastic
communities. Medieval Europe, thanks to war, plague and famine, was suffering massive depopulation in the 9th and 10th
centuries, which lead to a widespread labour shortage. Again, compared with the economy offered by paper, this gave the Arab
book effort an insurmountable advantage over the Christian West. Monks, it seems, had to frequently go begging of their lords'
for vellum, or the silver to acquire it. See Banks, 20, and De Hamel's History of the Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford : Phaidon,
1986), 84. 41 Ibid., 82; Christ, 33; Alberto Manguel, History of Reading (London: Harper-Collins, 1997), 71; Harold Innis, The
Bias of Communication (Toronto: University Press, 1991), 48, 52. Innis argues, even when Europe did begin to stir from its
slumber, the damage done by then to the pagan classics of Antiquity by the zeal of Christian copyists was immense, stating
'never in the world's history has so vast a literature been so radically given over to destruction." Again, as in Empire and
Communication, he asserts the Arab empire had a vast political, commercial and cultural advantage over the West thanks largely to 'paper and trade encouraging the growth of cities.' 42 Svend Dahl, History of the Book (Meutchen: Scarecrow, 1958), 39. 43Avrin, 254. 44 'The oldest known Italian document written on paper, in Greek and Arabic, by the Countess of Adelaide of
Sicily is dated from 1109 and is preserved in Palermo…during the 14th century, the use of paper became more general, but even
then problems arose. In 1231, Frederick II prohibited its use in Sicily; in the imperial, pontifical and ducal offices the use of
paper was restricted to letters…it's use was still prohibited in Florence as later as 1517,' - Gulia Bologna, Illuminated
Manuscripts (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 19. 45Not only can the movement of paper-use be traced through the book-arts of the Arab provinces, but also such
arts as the gilded leather binding, which make their first appearance in North Africa ca. 1062, move through Morocco in 1256,
and do not surface in Italy until 1459. See R. Ettinghausen, "Muslim decorative arts and painting: their nature and impact on
the medieval West," in Islam and the Medieval West (Binghamton: SUNY, 1975), 20. 46As opposed to the issue of quantity which, I think by now, with regard to collection size, has been given
sufficient mention. 47This became the basis for the science of diplomatics, or formal bibliographical textual analysis. 48Banks, 9. 49Libraries in the Arab world were know alternately by the name of dãr (house, mansion), bait (house, room) and
khizana (treasury), combined then with the terms 'ilm (knowledge, learning, science), hikma (wisdom) or kulub (books).
Libraries for fiction had their own special names, Daru al-Kutubi Ukdutha, literally 'house of stories', whose tales were in turn
subdivided in to the khurafat (mythic, often moralistic tales) and asmar (night stories told for entertainment); see Mackensen
(1932), 286-287. 50Mohamed Makki Sibai, Mosque Libraries: A historical study (London: Mansell, 1987); the warraqeen (after
waraq, being Arabic for paper) were the booksellers and stationariiof the Arab world, just as Europe would have in the 13-14th
centuries. See also B. Dodge, Muslim education in medieval times (Washington, Middle East Institute, 1962), 14. 51Harris, 83-86; Sordo, 32. 52The trade was not always equitable, mind you, as one historian recounts how the calligrapher and merchant Sa'id
of Malaga, upon hearing of a famine in Byzantium in the early 10th c. dispatched a freighter to that city loaded with grain and
instructed his agent there 'not to dispose of the grains except in exchange for books.' -Marrakushi, adh-Dhail was't-takmila
li-kitabai al-Mansul wa s'ila, ed. I. 'Abbas (Beirut: Thaqafa Press, 1965), v. 6, 212-213. 53Dannenfeldt, 101. 54George Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (Edinburgh: University Press,
1990), 72; the author translates an example of one certificate on p. 79: 'Mu'awiya al-Qurashi, Mhmd. Abah Saiyid and Ibn
Ashbaghand - Allah give them strength! - have read the whole of this book. They helped in copying it, transcribing it from the
papers containing the notes of my research and they collated it with their own copies…the work was heard by all concerned
through al-Quarshi's recitation of it under my direction, and they heard it especially through my own recitation to them. May it
please Allah to make it useful knowledge, drawing us closer to him." 55 Imamuddin, 136-137.56 Ibid., 140.57 Sibai, 4.58 See Peter R. L. Brown The world of late antiquity: from Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad (London, Thames and
Hudson, 1971), 189-203; Imamuddin; Southern; Saunders, 187-204.59 Imamuddin, 141: the account of the library's destruction is given by an Arab historian of Granada, Ibn Sa'id
(1214-1286), some two hundred years after the fact. Sa'id state the Berber leader, Hãjib al-Mansur, gave the order to destroy
the library. As with all historical accounts of cultural destruction, it is often difficult to extricate the political motive in laying
blame.60 Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church (NY: Doubleday, 1979), 172-173.61 Anwar Chejne, "The Role of al-Andalus in the movement of ideas between Islam and the West," in Islam and the
Medieval West: aspects of intercultural relations (Albany: SUNY, 1980), 117-119.